The Inceptive Ground, texture volume 01

This photograph is part of the ongoing multimedia project The Inceptive Ground, texture volume 01 (2018–2027), an inquiry into perception, matter, and landscape through analog photography, sculpture, and drawing. The project began with a 119-day solo cycling journey along the 70th western meridian in the Southern Hemisphere, moving from the driest deserts in the north, through volcanic and mountainous regions, vast open plains and surreal mirages, to the eternal ice in the south. Seeking to unlearn constructed knowledge of place, the project asks how a landscape might be approached without calling it by its given name, how perception might begin before memory, and how presence might arise without narrative.

Prehistoric Spearhead – Knorr Cube Bouillon: Evolution of Nourishment, 2019

This photograph presents a prehistoric spearhead found on a remote shoreline at the far southern edge of the Southern Hemisphere. According to archaeologists, it most likely served as a hunting tool for an indigenous coastal culture around 7,800 BCE. Shaped from grey chert, its surface bears conchoidal flake scars, evidence of deliberate human crafting. The object was packed into a Knorr bouillon cube box at the site where it was found.

The pairing brings together two objects connected to the same fundamental human necessity: nourishment. The spearhead belongs to a direct relationship between survival, material resources, and landscape; the bouillon cube packaging belongs to a contemporary system of processed, standardised, and industrially distributed food. Between them lies an evolutionary span of approximately 9,800 years.

Presented together, the objects compress this transformation into a single image. One was shaped from stone to obtain food directly from the surrounding environment; the other represents nourishment processed and packaged for immediate consumption. The work reflects on the changing relationship between humans, material resources, and the environment, while re-establishing a physical link to the inceptive ground from which this transformation began.